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Unit 6: Music & Death (Chapter 35 (Mozart and the Requiem (Dies Irae…

- - - - Originally for Catholic Church but found way to concert hall
      - Composers tend to customize the Catholic tradition
      - Music for comfort & spiritual sustenance
      - Usually in Latin
      - Mass for the dead
    - - On deathbed working on Funeral Mass- Requiem
        
        He died before finishing it
        
        Completed by a student, Franz Sussmayr (his favorite pupil)
        
        His last large-scale composition
      - Myths of Poison but not true
      - 1791- Died young- 35
      - Pauper's grave
        
        no idea where it is, couldn't afford anything else
      - "Confutatis Maledictis" where Mozart was on his death bed and writing
    - - Scored for SATB soloists plus chorus and orchestra
        
        Orchestra included more instruments- Bassoon & Basset horn
        
        Voices and instruments arrangement have dramatic effects
      - Impact
        
        JFK's Funeral (was chosen for it)
        
        9/11 commemorations (for 1 year anniversary across the globe)
    - - Day of Wrath for the funeral mass (REQUIEM)
      - Emphasizes power of Divine Intervention
      - Mozart did finish this
        
        beginning and end form a full circle, intense
      - Choral opening then solo verse and choral finish
      - Accented in duple meter
      - Harsh combo of major and minor
      - Homophonic
        
        easy to hear
      - 8 versus (3 lines each) -word painting
        
        varying performing forces
        
        charges in dynamics
        
        shifts in tempo
      - LG 25
        
        dramatic opening with trumpets, timpani to create fearful tone
        
        3rd verse, trombone solo then trombone and bass duet with slower tempo
        
        4th and 5th verses, tenor solo with increased rhythmic drive
        
        6th verse, solo alto
        
        7th verse, solo soprano and then 4 (SATB) soloists
        
        8th and final, dramatic chorus with slower tempo, loud then soft dynamics
- - - - Romantic music in France followed several streams
        
        Pianists in salons and concert halls
        
        Art song (melodie) separate from German lied
        
        to accommodate the unique features of the French language while drawing musical inspiration from the songs of Schubert
        
        Grand orchestral music and operas
        
        Sacred Music
        
        Faure's early career grounded in playing and composing music for the Catholic Church
    - - French
      - Trained to be a church musician in Paris
      - 1890- composition teacher at the Ecole Niedermeyer
      - Later director of Paris Conservatory
      - Influential music critic
      - French music advocate
      - Style is restrained (less orchestra music, more like chamber music)
        
        In direct contrast to German Romanticism
        
        Ex: Pavane
        
        repetitive, wanders around like floating, showcases the different instruments in woodwinds
    - - Nonstandard form
        
        Smaller Chamber Orchestra and organ
        
        minus violins
        
        7 movements
        
        a lot shorter
        
        Freely edited Latin liturgical texts
        
        took bits and pieces
      - Sometimes celestial, sometimes funereal
        
        show death as "a happy deliverance, a yearning for the happiness of the beyond, rather than a painful experience"
      - 1888- 1st performed for the funeral of an architect
      - Libera Me (LG 39)- Deliver me, O Lord
        
        Reassurance briefly interrupted by the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath)
        
        Composed earlier, as a work for baritone and organ
        
        Baritone solo, SATB chorus and small orchestra
        
        Homophonic texture
        
        Music conveys mood
        
        3-part form A-B-A'
      - Took over 20 years to write
- - - - Different from absolute music= musical patterns designed without meanings (literary or pictorial)
      - Program music is more artistic within society
      - Program music= instrumental music with literacy or pictorial associations specified by the composer
      - Helped composers relate their own work to the moral and political issues of their time
    - - Born in Southern France
        
        Meant to be a physician but loved music
      - Fan of Beethoven and Shakespeare
        
        Fell in love with Harriet Smithson-actress performed Shakespeare
        
        Married but loved Shakespeare actress personality more than her
      - Works draw upon literary influences
        
        Goethe, Lord Byron & Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet & King Lear)
      - Genius orchestrator
        
        Wrote a book on this
    - - Program symphony based on personal life
        
        27
        
        "Young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination, in...lovesick despair, [who] has poisoned himself with opium."
      - Form- Thematic Transformation
      - Music is intense & bold
        
        First great proponent of musical Romanticism in France
        
        His music is intense, bold, and passionate
      - Idee Fixe (fixed idea)
        
        Recurring musical thread unifying the five diverse movements
        
        Varied throughout by harmony, meter, timbre, dynamics & register
        
        thematic transformation
        
        literary & musical significance
      - Movement 4
        
        4th out of 5 movement program symphony
        
        dreams he has killed his beloved
        
        Theme A: descending scale in duple meter, then scale motion stays the same, while other elements are altered
        
        Theme B: ascending motion and is loud from brass and percussion
        
        set dark mood
    - - Reveries, Passions
        
        “[The musician] remembers the weariness of soul, the indefinable yearning he knew before meeting his beloved. Then, the volcanic love with which she at once inspired him, his delirious suffering... his religious consolation.”
      - A Ball
        
        "Amid the tumult and excitement of a brilliant ball he glimpses the loved one again."
      - Scene in the Fields
        
        "On a summer evening in the country he hears two shepherds piping. The pastoral duet, the quiet surroundings...all unite to fill his heart with a long-absent feeling of calm. But she appears again [idee fixe]. His heart contracts. Painful forebodings fill his soul."
      - March to the Scaffold
        
        "He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he has been condemned to die and is being led to the scaffold...At the very end the fixed idea reappears for an instant, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fall of the blade."
      - Dream of a Witches' Sabbath
        
        "He sees himself at a witches' sabbath surrounded by a host of fearsome spirits who have gathered for his funeral. Unearthly sounds, groans, shrieks of laughter. The melody of his beloved is hear, but it has lost its noble and reserved character. It has become a vulgar tune, trivial and grotesque. It is she who comes to the infernal orgy. A howl of joy greets her arrival. She joins the diabolical dance. Bells toll for the dead. A burlesque of the Dies irae. Dance of the witches. The dance and the Dies irae combined."
- - - - Recitative: plot advanced through speech-like singing
      - Arias: are tuneful, emotional songs
      - Opera: large-scale drama that is sung
      - Ensemble numbers and choruses-larger groups
      - Orchestra: provides an overture or sinfonias-opening
      - Librettist: writes the script of the opera
      - Opera not meant for realistic depiction, rather, "hyper-reality"
      - Strong emotions portrayed through music
    - - By 1642 public opera houses open in Venice
        
        Widespread entertainment
        
        Not mythology stories about love triangles and historical figures
        
        Example: Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea (1643)
        
        Male sings high (soprano) more harmony & melody, accompaniment lacking though, imitation
      - By 1700, Italian opera popular throughout Europe
        
        Except in France- had own tradition
      - Early opera an outgrowth of Renaissance theatrical traditions
        
        Example: Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607)
        
        Savall, listened to with brass on sides and traditional orchestral music
        
        Lavish spectacles
    - - Early 17th century masques
        
        Combined vocal and instrumental music with poetry and dance
        
        Popular among aristocracy
      - Commonwealth period
        
        Stage plays forbidden-"of the DEVIL"
        
        Plays set to music could be passed off as a "concert"
        
        This is the tradition behind England's first operas
    - - Based on part of Virgil's Aeneid
      - Opening
        
        Solo male voice with chorus (male & female) with string orchestra and harspichord
        
        strophic form (each stanza is sung to the same melody) relative to soloist and chorus
        
        scotch snap (short long rhythm that helps convey playfulness)
      - First performed at a London girls' school
      - Final
        
        recitative (solo vocal declamation of text) with free rhythm (no strong sense of beat) and sparse accompaniment
        
        aria (tuneful melody, regular beat) is slow triple meter, A-A-B-B form
        
        ground bass (short bass line repeated over and over during the aria)
        
        aria has ground bass once by itself, 8 times while soprano sings, and 2 more times after she finishes
      - Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
        
        Wrote- masques and operas
        
        Various English court posts
        
        Assimilated Italian & French styles to English Choral Singing
- - - - Embracing aspects of 19th century orchestral sound, including program music
      - "Modernizing" the 19th century orchestral tradition
      - Reclaimed 19th century harmonic & melodic language- just new context
      - Romantic style of the 1800s never really went away; still performed in concert halls
      - Some composers maintained a commitment to Romanticism, updating it
        
        Samuel Barbet's Adagio For Strings
        
        rich in tone, simpler ideas (can hear the melody), still beautiful with deeper more complex sounds
    - - Born in Brooklyn
      - Studied with George Crumb
      - Inspired by the Beatles
      - Output spans most genres, described as having an "American" sound
      - Rooting in tonality, Neo-Romanticism
      - Pulitzer prize in 2010 for her Violin Concerto
      - Teaches composition at the Curtis Institute
      - her instrument- FLUTE
    - - Personal grief over death of her brother
      - Overall
        
        Lyrical- neo romantic
        
        No key center- lots major triads
        
        Meters shift but mostly 5/4
        
        Metallic percussion- including Chinese reflex balls
      - Written in 2000
      - Program music
        
        Tone colors
        
        Biographical elements
      - Meant for large orchestra
      - Homophonic texture with a focus on individual lines and duets
      - Sectional structure: rondo-like, A-B-A-C, A returns again after B